1960

Hotels and theatres open for the first time on
Anzac Day. Organised sport allowed in the afternoon

Jun 01

Hobart: The last tram runs. Earlier in April,
a runaway tram crashed into another tram. Several vehicles,
including a bus, were hit by the trams. A conductor was killed
and more than 40 people were treated for injuries in the Royal
Hobart Hospital.

1962

Jan 17

Melbourne: Busfhires rage through the Great Divide
and the Dandenong Ranges on the edge of Melboune, killing 8
people and destroying hundreds of houses

Feb 20

Perth: As Astronaut John Glenn circles the Earth,
the city of Perth turns on its lights. "I can see the outline
of a town and a very bright light just to the south of it."
Glenn dubs Perth "The City of Lights"

Feb 23

Sydney: Australia tallest building opens, the
25-storey AMP building

Apr 12

Melbourne: The Southern Aurora arrives
from Sydney on the new uniform-gauge line that now links the
2 states Video clip (mute)

Aug 09

Federal Government bans drug thalidomide

Sep 10

New York: Rod Laver wins the Grand Slam in men's
tennis after his defeat of fellow Australian Roy Emerson in
the US Championships. Margaret Smith is the first Australian
woman to win the US Women's Singles title

Nov 22

Perth: Prince Philip opens the Commonwealth Games.
Australia's medal tally at the end of the games is 38, the highest
score for any one country in Commonwealth Games' history

Dec 07

Perth: Philip Magalnir becomes the first Australian
Aborigine to vote under the new Commonwealth electoral laws
granting voting rights to Aborigines

1963

Jan 01

Bogle/Chandler Case: Two boys near the Lane Cove
River in Sydney find the bodies of Dr Gilbert Stanley Bogle,
a physicist with the CSIRO, and Mrs Margaret Chandler, wife
of a CSIRO scientist. Although poisoning is suspected, the case
is still unsolved

Feb 07

First Secretary of the Soviet Embassy, Ivan Skripov,
is expelled as a spy

April

Comalco begins full-scale mining of bauxite at
Weipa on Cape York Peninsula

Wimbledon: Margaret Smith becomes the first Australian
woman to win the Women's Singles tennis championship

Jul 20

WA: First stage of the Ord River irrigation project,
the dam at Kununurra, opens

Aug 08

Australia becomes the first nation to endorse
the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

Oct 17

Stockholm: The Australian scientist Sir John
Carew Eccles is awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine for his
work on the central portions of the nerve cell membrane

Nov 12

Menzies becomes the first Party leader to make
his policy speech on TV

Dec

Darwin: Police evict the Mapoon community on
Cape York Peninsula and raze community buildings to allow bauxite
mining. This becomes the focus for the growing issues of aboriginal
land rights

1964

Feb 11

Jervis Bay: The aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne
collides with the destroyer HMAS Voyager, cutting it
in half and killing 82 of the Voyager's officers and
crew in the worst peacetime naval disaster in Australian history

Feb 25

Canberra: Royal Commission into the Voyager
disaster opens

April

Judy Hanrahan becomes the first woman teller appointed by
the Bank of NSW since the war
Dr Hanna Neumann is named Professor of the Department of Pure
Mathematics at the ANU
Canberra: Federal Government fails to ratify the ILO convention
on equal pay for women

Sydney: The first Australian conscripts fly out
for Vietnam. Anti-conscription and anti-Vietnam War demonstrators
could not get near the RAAF base at Richmond

Aug 18

Long Tan: Australian troops encounter one of
the bloodiest episodes yet with the Viet Cong

Aug 26

Wave Hill: 200 hundred aborigines employed on
the Wave Hill cattle station go on strike claiming a wage of
$50 a week

Darwin: Harry Chan elected first ethnic Chinese
mayor

1967

Feb 03

Melbourne: Ronald Ryan is the last man to hang
in Australia for the murder of a prison warder while escaping
from Melbourne's Pentridge Jail. His execution would result
in the abolition of the death penalty.

Feb 07

Tasmanian bushfires

Feb 08

Gough Whitlam succeeds Arthur Calwell to become
new Leader of the Labor Party

May 27

90% of white Australians vote in referendum for
proposal to count aborigines in the census and to allow the
federal government to make special laws for them

Sep 08

Brisbane: Demonstrations against Queensland Government
regulations, which require groups to apply for, and be granted,
a permit before holding any public meeting in the city

Sep 09

The Federal Government announces it will set
up the Office of Aboriginal Affairs

Dec 22

Portsea: Prime Minister Harold Holt disappears
while swimming in heavy surf south of Melbourne. His body is
never found